ABSTRACT
In attempting to describe the Englishman’s impressions of coloured people in Britain and his reactions towards them, it is important to realise that so far as something like 95 per cent. of English people are concerned, 2 they are based entirely on some stereotyped idea rather than on first-hand personal knowledge of coloured people. These form a very small part of the English population, and although the Second World War increased their numbers and widened their distribution, they are ordinarily to be met or even seen in anything like representative numbers only in the large seaport cities, including London, and, in a less representative sense, in certain university towns. It will already be clear that the coloured person in the dockland area of English ports is usually of the poorer, less “acculturated” and less educated type. As we shall see more fully in the next chapter, factors in the sociological situation itself, such as the colour bar, limit even further the ordinary Englishman’s possibility of meeting an educated coloured person, and tend to restrict such contacts largely to officials of the Colonial Office, welfare organisations, and the like.
